CHAPTER 6
Paja / Straw
1. (noun, literal) - a drinking straw
2. (noun, slang) - a wank
3. (noun, slang) - trash talk, or nonsense
Mindful of the eyes surrounding him on the crowded bus, Dylan's thumb skipped right over the ManyFanz app icon, no matter how much the urge to check his stats again gnawed away inside his gut.
Instead, he checked his email. Scrolling through spam and the occasional reminder from his professors about their classes; turning up the volume on his headphones to drown out the baby who’d been crying since at least the stop before Dylan had gotten on; searching to see if he'd gotten an update from his immigration lawyer about his asylum application yet.
Nope, nada.
Just more waiting on waiting, I guess.
Flipping through a few other apps, Dylan kept a tight hold on the overhead bar as the bus swaggered drunkenly through a turn.
He hadn't meant to open his texts, knowing he’d find nothing good waiting for him there. Spam about selling a house he didn't own. A political candidate he couldn't legally vote for. Somesupposed long-lost girlfriend he was pretty sure he’d remember having. Dick enhancement quackery. A restaurant he'd never eaten at running a special he still couldn't afford…
Blocking the lot of them, he stopped and, unable to help himself, tapped open an older convo. Dylan grunted, glaring at the little 'A' icon on the left side of the screen still stubbornly refusing to drop below the unread text he'd sent Ashton under the pretext of meeting up for their class project.
Stupid. What'd you expect, candy and flowers? Just treat it like any other hookup and move on already.
It’s not as if Dylan sat around hoping to hear from any of his other dates, and that included the ones with guys who didn't have half of some straight strawberry's hangups. If Dylan had ever been so delusional as to assume there could be anything more, Ashton's retreat the other night after their encounter on the roof should've shut that hope down hard.
Still, it's not as if our professor will accept a, 'Sorry we couldn't finish the project, we were too busy fucking' excuse. You'd think Ashton could get over himself long enough to keep us from failing the class.
He looked up as the bus heaved itself to Dylan’s stop, like some great leviathan beaching itself upon the shore. Pocketing his phone, he shouldered his way forward through the crowded aisle just as the brakes gave a petulant hiss.
Dylan smirked at the sour-faced old man glaring at him, throwing him a wink for good measure. Idly, he wondered which pissed him off more — the color of Dylan's skin, the rainbow and 'he/they' patches sewn into his jean jacket, or the bright pink of his mohawk.
Probably all three.
Fine by him. It wasn't Dylan's job to make the guycomfortable. He had his own problems; he didn't have time for someone's made-up ones.
Pushing his way to the front, he scooped up a battered stuffed toy he'd almost stepped on, returning it wordlessly to the young woman who'd been trying in vain to soothe her fussy baby.
She took it with a harried but polite smile, one that grew genuine when her attention landed on his face.
"I like your hair," blurted out the little boy sitting next to her, his wide eyes fixed just above Dylan's head.
"Thanks, muchacho," Dylan winked at him. "I like yours."
There was a bodega on the corner run by an elderly couple and their two sons. The younger son was on shift as Dylan walked in, offering a distracted head nod and "Wassup?" over the door's recorded chime. He never once looked up from the textbook he was highlighting; some thick tome that made Dylan doubly glad he wasn't going after a geology degree too.
Snagging a couple shrink-wrapped multipacks of instant ramen and a soda from the cooler, Dylan very carefully didnotlook at his phone's notification list, quickly opening the payment app to his debit card by muscle memory alone.
"More to life than just ramen, dude," the cashier said as he rang Dylan up. "Gonna get sick if you don't eat better."
Dylan huffed, passing up the brown bananas in the basket of fruit that rotted hopefully away beside the riot of lotto tickets and branded vape stickers plastered across the clear plexiglass barrier between them. Grabbing the least dodgy apple he saw, Dylan set it on the counter next to his soda.
"Happy?" he asked, raising his right eyebrow.
"Ecstatic," the cashier drawled as Dylan paid, returning to his studies while Dylan scooped up his bounty and headed out.
It was a nice day, at least. Chilly, especially for someone who'd grown up south of the Trópico de Cáncer. But the sun was out and the moat of oily sludge eternally separating the street and the door to Dylan's apartment building was mostly dried up, both of which were a welcome change after a week of rainy mornings.
